Date/Time
Date(s) - 23 Mar 2015
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
Monday, March 23, at 5:30pm, Ardis Butterfield (Yale University).
“From Shape to Sound in Medieval Song”
Abstract:
Revivifying songs from the medieval past remains an often contentious practice for modern scholars and performers. Before the late thirteenth century, songs were either not written down at all or survive in forms of writing that have remained persistently difficult to decipher because of their (to us) often obscure representation of musical sound. Without trying necessarily to ‘solve’ this dilemma, this talk will look again at some of the essential components of musical writing, and compare them to the ways in which words, too, record sound. The process by which living sound turns into dead, silent notational marks and back again will be considered through the practice of editing texts alongside editing music, in short by considering both types of editing as efforts to reconstruct sound. My examples will embrace quite a wide set of meanings associated with ‘shape’: the shape of a letter, which can also be the shape of a musical note (nota), a syllable, a word, a phrase, a line, a stanza form, and even a ‘whole’ piece. Much of the time, as my examples will show, there is no easy route from shape to sound. But this can be instructive. Looking at material from several centuries ago involves trying to understand how the predations of history change its shape: I mean this in two senses, that physically, time alters the material record of these living contexts, and second, more broadly, that history exerts a constant pressure on the shape of verse.
PLEASE NOTE:
The 5:30 talk will be followed by dinner at 7pm at Faculty House. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno, [email protected]. Dinner is a fixed buffet menu, which costs $25 per person. Payment can be made by checks made out to “Columbia University.”